Buy Alaska Miles with up to 50% Bonus, Cheapest I Have Seen Them

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Until August 9, 2015, you can buy Alaska Airlines miles for as little as 1.97 cents each. Go to the sale page for Alaska miles and input your Alaska Mileage Plan number. People are being offered bonuses of 35% to 50% on purchased miles. I received a 40% bonus offer.

Non-cardholders of the Alaska Airlines Visa seem to be getting the 35% bonus offer, and cardholders are getting a maximum bonus of 35%-50%.

The sale is structured as a bonus on the normal number of miles you’d receive. The bonus is tiered, so the biggest 35%-50% bonus comes from purchasing 40,000 miles at the normal price of about 2.96 cents each after tax.

To buy 40,000 miles during this sale costs $1,182.50.

• If your bonus for buying 40,000 miles is 35%, you can buy 54,000 miles for 2.19 cents each.
• If your bonus for buying 40,000 miles is 40%, you can buy 56,000 miles for 2.11 cents each.
• If your bonus for buying 40,000 miles is 50%, you can buy 60,000 miles for 1.97 cents each.

I don’t think Alaska miles are worth even 1.97 cents each, but they are worth close to that, and if you have a specific redemption in mind, it isn’t hard to get more than 1.97 cents of value per mile.

Airlines on which You Can Redeem Alaska Miles

Here are the Alaska partners on which you can redeem. (Plus Alaska Airlines is about to allow us to redeem miles on Hainan Airlines.)

Four Favorite Redemptions

Here are my four favorite redemptions with Alaska miles:

1. Emirates A380 First Class

Emirates First Class on an A380 costs 100,000 miles one way for two flights to Africa, Asia, or Europe.

Emirates First Class

Here is my review of Emirates First Class on the A380. I am very excited to have two more segments in it coming up in September.

2. Cathay Pacific First Class

Cathay Pacific First Class costs 70,000 miles one way from the United States to Johannesburg with a free stopover in Hong Kong.

Here is my review of Cathay Pacific First Class.

3. Fiji Airways Business Class

You can fly from the United States to Fiji to New Zealand or Australia for only 55,000 Alaska miles one way in Business Class with a free stopover in Fiji.

4. AeroMexico Business Class

You can fly from the United States to Southern South America like Brazil or Argentina in AeroMexico Business Class for 45,000 Alaska miles one way. Try to get at least one segment on AeroMexico’s Dreamliner.

I will fly AeroMexico Business Class in October.

Alaska Airlines Award Routing Rules

Alaska Airlines is extremely generous allowing a stopover on one way awards, anywhere you’d like en route.

Here are the basics for redemptions of Alaska miles.

Logistics of Buying Alaska Miles

Unlike many miles sales when you are capped at how many miles you can buy, with Alaska miles sales, you can generally make several maximum purchases to get all the miles you need.

Remember that Alaska Airlines miles sales are handled through points.com, so they are not considered airfare or travel purchases for the purposes of earning a category bonus on your credit card.

By contrast, Avianca miles are sold through lifemiles.com and DO count as airfare/travel spending.

Alaska runs a 35% or 40% bonus on miles purchases every quarter. The last one ended in April and offered a 40% bonus on purchased miles.